Anna Pops and Luke Stopford Sackville first met through a mutual friend on Mustique’s Macaroni Beach. Looking back on it today, the bride says the encounter feels fated. “Mustique holds a very special place in my heart,” Anna shares.
“My family has been going since I was a very little girl, making it feel like home. I smile to think that I met the love of my life on the same beach where I grew up building myself mermaid tails in the sand.” But in the moment, it ended up being exactly that: a moment.
Luke, a financier, lived in London and Anna, who works in marketing at Charlotte Tilbury, lived in New York. While their chemistry was immediate, the reality of living on two separate continents was not. They left the island wanting to get to know each other better, but not quite sure how.
A few weeks later, however, Luke was in New York for business. He worked up the courage to ask her to dinner, but failed to make it clear that it was a date. So Anna asked if she could bring her close friend and her close friend’s husband.
A confused Luke agreed—and then invited a friend of his own. “We had an amazing time—the five us,” she says, laughing. When Luke learned Anna was visiting Italy with her family that summer, he knew this time he had to make his interest obvious.
“Luke suggested that he come meet me and plan a special trip,” Anna says. “In hindsight, this was a crazy leap of faith, but I didn’t think twice about it.” “I had never done anything lik.